With a gradual resurgence of interest in Kojève and growing number of manuscripts being published, it would appear that the value or relevance of Kojève’s writings did not solely depend upon his legacy being one single wager on a “last judgment” of the end of history “having already happened” in 1806, or its revision by Francis Fukuyama in 1989, and that the task of updating Kojève may now be possible beyond the strictures of the end of history idea. The fragmentary character of many of the recently published manuscripts not only challenges readers as to how these “fragments” fit into Kojève’s planned three-level “Système du Savoir” but also may suggest rethinking the central place that is often attributed in the literature to his Hegel Course (Introduction to the Reading of Hegel) and its prophetic vision of the end of history. One of these “fragments” which has recently come to light for English-language readers is Atheism, which first shows Kojève had planned a system of atheist philosophy before his later Hegel Course and the “mise à jour du Système du Savoir” of the 1950s. In Atheism, Kojève endeavours to elaborate an atheist system of philosophy based on an ontological investigation into what he refers to as “the Nothing” [Nichto], which he presents as determining the coordinates of the “ontological dispute” between atheism and theism––a dualism that persists throughout Kojève’s writings. Although Kojève left the manuscript unfinished and the truth of the dispute “open” without any particular “practical solution” proposed, we can see how some of the arguments from the manuscript raise questions about the meaning of finality and the paradoxes of philosophizing any “end” or truth. This article then discusses how the “dispute” uncovered in Atheism continues, but in a different register in Kojève’s Hegel Course, as well as outside it in various other under-examined texts. It is with Kojève’s own creative update of Hegel’s philosophy of history, that he utilizes as a “phenomenological introduction” into his three-part atheist system, to facilitate the living ideal of atheism–– and enable what he sees as a “practical solution” to the ontological dispute. However, this article concludes the dispute is not so easily solved via a recourse to a reconstructed Hegel or in in Kojève’s political activities but continues to be overshadowed by its theological lineage. The article concludes that if an update of Kojève’s philosophy is indeed possible, it should not simply be its “tragic” or “farcical” repetition, but one that learns from its paradoxes and limits but carries on the spirit that first drove it.

Returning to a fork in the road: The paradoxical leaps along Kojève’s paths to atheism

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2025年12月1日

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Rory Jeffs

摘要

With a gradual resurgence of interest in Kojève and growing number of manuscripts being published, it would appear that the value or relevance of Kojève’s writings did not solely depend upon his legacy being one single wager on a “last judgment” of the end of history “having already happened” in 1806, or its revision by Francis Fukuyama in 1989, and that the task of updating Kojève may now be possible beyond the strictures of the end of history idea. The fragmentary character of many of the recently published manuscripts not only challenges readers as to how these “fragments” fit into Kojève’s planned three-level “Système du Savoir” but also may suggest rethinking the central place that is often attributed in the literature to his Hegel Course (Introduction to the Reading of Hegel) and its prophetic vision of the end of history. One of these “fragments” which has recently come to light for English-language readers is Atheism, which first shows Kojève had planned a system of atheist philosophy before his later Hegel Course and the “mise à jour du Système du Savoir” of the 1950s. In Atheism, Kojève endeavours to elaborate an atheist system of philosophy based on an ontological investigation into what he refers to as “the Nothing” [Nichto], which he presents as determining the coordinates of the “ontological dispute” between atheism and theism––a dualism that persists throughout Kojève’s writings. Although Kojève left the manuscript unfinished and the truth of the dispute “open” without any particular “practical solution” proposed, we can see how some of the arguments from the manuscript raise questions about the meaning of finality and the paradoxes of philosophizing any “end” or truth. This article then discusses how the “dispute” uncovered in Atheism continues, but in a different register in Kojève’s Hegel Course, as well as outside it in various other under-examined texts. It is with Kojève’s own creative update of Hegel’s philosophy of history, that he utilizes as a “phenomenological introduction” into his three-part atheist system, to facilitate the living ideal of atheism–– and enable what he sees as a “practical solution” to the ontological dispute. However, this article concludes the dispute is not so easily solved via a recourse to a reconstructed Hegel or in in Kojève’s political activities but continues to be overshadowed by its theological lineage. The article concludes that if an update of Kojève’s philosophy is indeed possible, it should not simply be its “tragic” or “farcical” repetition, but one that learns from its paradoxes and limits but carries on the spirit that first drove it.